Why Bubble Talk is Totally Wrong with Ankur Crawford

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Compound and Friends – "Why Bubble Talk is Totally Wrong" with Dr. Ankur (Encore) Crawford

Date: April 17, 2026
Host(s): Downtown Josh Brown, Michael Batnick
Guest: Dr. Ankur Crawford, Executive Vice President and Portfolio Manager at Alger

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Compound and Friends features Dr. Ankur Crawford, a veteran growth investor and technology specialist. The hosts delve into Dr. Crawford’s investment philosophy, the state and future of AI, semiconductor dynamics, why talk of a "bubble" in tech is misguided, and the evolving landscape of the public and private markets. Dr. Crawford shares firsthand insights on portfolio construction, investing during technological revolutions, and the reasons behind the astronomical valuations in select tech subsectors. The conversation is energetic, irreverent, packed with industry anecdotes, and highly accessible – even on complex technical topics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Crawford’s Background and Investment Framework

• Academic and Professional Roots
  • PhD from Stanford in Materials Science and Engineering (00:17)
  • Early sell-side meeting with Adam, former semiconductor analyst at Bernstein, sparked Wall Street interest (00:29)
• Investment Philosophy at Alger
  • Alger is a classic “growth manager,” always looking for "change," viewing it as the wellspring of investment opportunity (10:11)
  • Dr. Crawford distinguishes between "high unit volume growth" (companies in rapid expansion) and "life cycle change" (mature companies reinventing themselves, e.g., Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia) (11:13)
  • Value in recognizing "unrecognized growth," not just classic value investing (12:28)
  • Essential to evaluate the management team’s ability to execute a turnaround (12:34)

Quote:
“Where there’s change, there’s unrecognized opportunity. And if you can recognize that change before the market, then you make a lot of money.” – Dr. Ankur Crawford (10:11)

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2. AI’s Current Trajectory: Exponential, Not Linear

• Exponential Pace of Change
  • AI development is accelerating far faster than Dr. Crawford initially anticipated; agents and agentic products arrived years ahead of schedule (13:21)
  • Exponential growth in compute demand is difficult for linearly-trained analysts and investors to grasp (14:21)
  • AI advances allow previously impossible capabilities, democratizing tasks from coding to college applications (16:06–17:03)

Quote:
“As analysts, we think linearly. The market thinks linearly. But we are in a time of exponential growth.” – Dr. Ankur Crawford (14:21)

• Personal Anecdotes
  • Built a college counseling app for her daughter using AI, without a background in coding (19:10)
  • Firsthand use of Perplexity Computer and OpenClaw agents to automate complex tasks (16:06–17:03)

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3. Investing in the Private Tech Boom

• Private Market Participation
  • Cites historically unprecedented growth in late-stage private company valuations—companies are now staying private until nearly a trillion-dollar market cap (20:00)
  • Alger’s funds participate in select late-stage private rounds (e.g., Anthropic at $380B valuation); can allocate up to 15% to privates (20:37)
• Rationale
  • Accessing value growth unavailable to most public investors, justifying active management (21:09)
  • Previous experience investing early in Palantir and Chime (20:51)

Quote:
“We have never before, in the history of the market, seen companies that are staying private till they're almost a trillion dollars.” – Dr. Ankur Crawford (20:00)

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4. Compute Shortage and Semiconductor Dynamics

• Shortage of Compute

  • The global demand for compute is exponential; everyone is short compute (22:47)
  • Unit of measure: "tokens"—units of intelligence/work carried out by AI (29:03)
  • Bottlenecks: currently chips (Nvidia, TSMC), but also DRAM and other supply chain components (30:08–30:32)
  • Price of DRAM and memory chips exploded as market only recently recognized the shortage, reflecting non-linearity in adoption and investment (31:08–31:30)

• Industry Consolidation

  • Semiconductor supply chain has sharply consolidated over the last 20 years; three main players in DRAM, two in hard disk drives (34:31–35:50)
  • Fewer alternatives means surging demand translates directly into skyrocketing stock prices (36:13)

• Refuting Bubble Talk

  • The magnitude of real earnings growth and lack of readily available alternatives supports current multiples (39:01)
  • “Bubble” narratives often stem from a lack of understanding of the underlying technologies and markets (40:42–41:20)

Quote:
“Tokens are a unit of intelligence... really, you should think of tokens as being units of compute. And the more intelligence you need, the more tokens you use.” – Dr. Ankur Crawford (29:03)

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5. Drawing Contrasts: Now vs. Past Tech Bubbles

• Why This Is Not Like Telecom/Internet or Solar Bubbles

  • Early 2000s capex was on assets (fiber, etc.) far ahead of demand; the tech to utilize them didn’t exist yet (63:01)
  • Today, capex goes directly to productive, in-demand infrastructure—technology is in place and usage is immediate (64:47)
  • Prior bubbles (e.g., solar) had extremely low technical barriers and high commoditization potential—absent from today’s semiconductor/AI environment (43:14)

• ROI and Adaptability

  • Hyperscalers’ capex has 18-month payback windows currently, and they can readily adjust if demand changes (58:21)
  • Capex, amortization concerns about tech depreciation (commentary on Dr. Burry’s critique) are misplaced—AI chips last well beyond short depreciation schedules (65:01)

Quote:
“We had dreamed the dream in 2000, but we actually didn't have the technology.” – Dr. Ankur Crawford (63:46)

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6. Hyperscalers, SaaS, and the AI Revolution

• Hyperscalers’ Evolution

  • Transition from asset-light to asset-heavy as they build out the compute layer for AI (46:19)
  • Cloud capex boom mirrors early cloud investments, but magnitude and timeframes are compressed (48:03)
  • Amazon’s in-house chip efforts (Trainium) lag behind Google’s TPUs but are catching up (51:49–52:05)

• Software and SaaS: At a Crossroads

  • Debate over “SaaSapocalypse”: Can traditional SaaS, like Salesforce, maintain growth and expansions as AI enables build-your-own and brings down barriers? (77:09–78:49)
  • Suggests many SaaS platforms only see 15–20% feature utilization by clients; AI may reduce seat-based pricing power (79:16, 80:44)
  • Best-positioned: platforms over point solutions, with cybersecurity leaders (Crowdstrike, Palo Alto) likelier to withstand disruption (81:26)

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7. Notable Company-Specific Commentary

Nebias (66:04)

• Potential "next AI-native hyperscaler," spun out of Yandex, based in the Netherlands
• Great founder story; massive engineer migration post-Ukraine invasion

QXO (68:48)

• Roll-up of building product companies, led by serial entrepreneur Brad Jacobs
• Investment case is based on industry fragmentation and operational upgrades

Applovin (71:20)

• Advertising tech with AI-driven ad serving and ambitious push into e-commerce
• Strong management with founder retention and efficient cost structure

Apple & Amazon (85:56)

• Apple’s "Halo" (physical product dominance) at risk unless it develops agentic AI interfaces (86:14)
• Amazon’s fundamentals and valuation remain highly attractive; AWS and chip development are key (49:46–50:25)

Intel (74:39)

• Remarkable turnaround under new CEO Lippboo, but skepticism about its ability to succeed as a foundry (75:21–76:58)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Exponential Change (14:21): “We’re in a time of exponential growth. It’s really hard to get your arms around what exponential actually means and what the endpoint is.”
• On Bubble Narratives (40:54): “Sometimes it’s almost easier: if you don’t understand something, be like, Oh, it must be a bubble.”
• On Tokenization (29:03): “Tokens are a unit of intelligence... the more intelligence you need, the more tokens you use.”
• On Private Market Phenomenon (20:00): “We have never before... seen companies that are staying private till they’re almost a trillion dollars.”
• On Apple’s Risk (86:14): “If Apple doesn’t act soon, that Halo designation is going away... AI will allow us to extract ourselves from our screens.”
• On Investment Flexibility (27:57): “If you can sell something for a profit and buy it back 30, 40% cheaper, you do that any day.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Investment Philosophy & Approach (10:11–13:02)
• AI & Exponential Growth (13:02–16:33)
• Building Apps as a Non-Coder with AI (16:33–19:10)
• Private Market Growth & Access (19:45–21:35)
• Why the Compute Shortage is Real (22:47–31:11)
• Industry Consolidation in Semis (34:22–36:19)
• “Bubble” Talk Debunked (39:49–43:14)
• ROI on AI Capex / Non-Bubble Differences (57:58–65:23)
• Software/SaaS Threats & Opportunities (78:31–83:35)
• Q&A on Holdings (Nebias, QXO, Applovin, etc.) (65:57–73:36)
• Apple's AI Challenge & Halo Discussion (85:56–88:16)

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Tone & Language

True to the Compound style, the discussion is candid, often irreverent, but deeply knowledgeable. The hosts mix “dumb” questions, analogies (from New York restaurants to F1 racing), and industry lingo, all while maintaining a conversational, accessible tone. Dr. Crawford is direct, occasionally skeptical, and not afraid to take contrarian positions, especially against “bubble” narratives.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a rare, in-depth look at how a leading growth investor approaches technological change, market cycles, and unprecedented boom in AI. Dr. Crawford’s blend of scientific rigor, portfolio experience, and conviction—along with her willingness to challenge consensus (“bubble talk is stupid”)—makes for a timely, insightful conversation for both professional and retail investors navigating tech’s current era.

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For more details about Alger funds: alger.com
More episodes & disclosures: Ritholtz Wealth Podcasts

Transcript

[Josh Brown]

So remind me again, how did you. How did you first meet Adam? You guys worked together.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Oh, my God. Adam. When I came to Alger, I had just finished my PhD, knew diddly shit about anything.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And my very first.

[Josh Brown]

How old were you?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I was 28.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

Where do you do your PhD?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Stanford. NASA community in materials science and engineering. So, like, it was like. And. And I sat down. My very first sell side meeting was with Adam.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And he was a semiconductor analyst at Bernstein.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. And he probably talked most of the time.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So he did talk most of the time. But I was like, wow, what a cool, like, smart guy. And we just stayed in touch after that.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so we're gonna get into how you came to Wall street, and we'll do all that stuff.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Okay.

[Josh Brown]

All right.

[Michael Batnick]

I listened to my first Taiwan sent me earnings call today.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Oh, you did?

[Michael Batnick]

It was very strange, I thought. I'm sure you listened to a million of them. That the analysts ask questions and then the CFO repeats the question that has been asked for every single question. It's bizarre.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I think.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know what's happened there because he literally, he's like, all right. So the question was. I'm like, huh, that's weird. And then he just did it the entire call.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So it used to be that there was like actually an audience. And so people would ask in the audience and they were on stage.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And that was how it used to be.

[Michael Batnick]

But you heard the call, heard the question. I don't know, but that's a possible explanation.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Maybe it's a cultural.

[Michael Batnick]

I thought it was odd that their. Their deck looks like it was made in the 90s. Like their investment deck. What is that?

[Josh Brown]

Well, I mean, it's. It's only like a trillion dollar company, so you got to give them some time.

[Michael Batnick]

But it looks like it was made on Ms. Dos. Like, honestly, like, I pulled one chart, but it just looks like that hasn't been updated since 1984.

[Josh Brown]

How do you listen to conference calls? Do you, like, you dial in or do you. Have you discovered quarter yet?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, I have quarter, but we use something called era.

[Josh Brown]

Ah, okay. What's that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so it's similar to quarter. You basically go through and you just click through into a call. Makes it really easy.

[Josh Brown]

So we're investors in quarter, but also like power users. I'm obsessed with it. I don't know how I ever used it because I like seeing the words get illuminated as they're being spoken. So you're reading it and hearing it at the same Time, and I feel like it sinks in better.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So it's interesting. I talked to one of your sales guys. Yeah. From. From quarter.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And told him that I think I forget exactly what the pricing was, but ERA was giving us better pricing.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. I know some people there, so.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, I think they actually use quarter on the back end.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, you should.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. White labeling it. Okay. All right. How many. How many calls? Yes. How many calls are you listening to each quarter? Like, do you have. Do you have people listening for you on some, or do you get to everything yourself?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No, we have a team. Right. Yeah. So we have a team that listens to everything, and then selectively, I'll go through and listen to certain calls.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. What are the ones that you personally won't miss?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Oh, I mean definitively. The hyperscalers. A ts. I did miss TSM today because I had a. Just a personal appointment.

[Michael Batnick]

Don't worry, the story is intact. That's what they said.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Great. I read your notes. Yeah. So I don't know. It depends on which quarter it is. I'll try to listen to, like, Walmart or Costco to understand what's happening on that side of the consumer. An industrial company, a health care company. So just a smattering. Because there's no way that as a portfolio manager, as we're. We're going to be able to get through the entire portfolio.

[Josh Brown]

It's too. Yeah, it's too many. It's. And they're all together and it's like a fire hose.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, it's a great service. There's a company. There's a subset called the Transcript that I subscribe to, where they pull from, like, the most important quotes from all different companies that, of course, you can't listen to all of them. So that gives you a good sense.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, I don't. Obviously, I don't listen to.

[Josh Brown]

They're doing that with. They're doing that with AI.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't know, man. This guy listens to a lot of calls. But yeah, I'm sure.

[Josh Brown]

Sure.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I mean, alternatively, you can just go into perplexity and I'll. I'll give them the lineup for the day and.

[Michael Batnick]

What. But no quarter can do that.

[Josh Brown]

They can all do that.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, give me the best quotes. What do they say about this? It's great.

[Josh Brown]

All right. This is gonna be fun. So this is your first. My understanding. Your first podcast.

[Michael Batnick]

No.

[Josh Brown]

Yes.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No, it's my. No, he says. No, it's my second.

[Josh Brown]

What was. Did you do Joe Rogan last week or something. What was your.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I don't know. What was it, Scott?

[Josh Brown]

What else?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Morningstar. Oh, Morningstar.

[Josh Brown]

All right, fine. But we're gonna pretend this is your first one. I'm sure it was great. Shout out to Morningstar. I'm sure it was terrific. All right. This is gonna be a lot of fun. And I'm so appreciative of you coming and doing this.

[Michael Batnick]

Are you okay?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah. These are kind of uncomfortable.

[Josh Brown]

I think you have them on backwards.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Oh, I do. Why didn't you tell me that before?

[Josh Brown]

I told you, I just noticed now. So this should be on the left. Your left side.

[Michael Batnick]

Is that better?

[Josh Brown]

We got it.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, that's better.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

My hair okay?

[Michael Batnick]

You look great.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Okay, great.

[Josh Brown]

Thanks, Daniel. I blame you. I feel like you're not on top of these things, so. All right, guys, how we looking? Our guest has nine more conference calls to listen to today.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Looking pretty good. Let me come in and search you up.

[Josh Brown]

All right, that's our theme song, so usually the guest will deliver a freestyle rap over this. Are you. Do you have something prepared?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No, I do not.

[Josh Brown]

All right, we'll do it next.

[Michael Batnick]

We'll do it next time.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Sorry.

[Josh Brown]

Episode 238 Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Michael Batnick]

Stop the clock. Here's a word from our sponsor.

[Josh Brown]

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[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Welcome to the compound and friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnick and their castmates are solely their own opinions. And do not reflect the opinion of Redholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

[Josh Brown]

238.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

What's your lucky number?

[Josh Brown]

It really is. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 238th edition of the Compound. And, friends, your favorite investing podcast, arguably and many would say, the best podcast in all of investing. We appreciate you guys listening. Each week you're doing. John, we're doing record numbers this year. Record numbers. All right. Our guest today has never, ever before been on a podcast. I have it on high authority. She is Dr. Anker Crawford, the executive vice president and portfolio manager of the Alger Capital Appreciation, Alger Focus Equity, and Alger Spectra Large Cap Growth Equity Funds and more. One more. The Alger Concentrated Equity etf. I just counted four. You doing four?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. That's amazing. Congratulations. The ticker on that Last one is CNEQ, and that was launched in 2024. Anchor holds several patents and was awarded a fellowship by the National Academy of Sciences. She came to Wall Street 22 years ago and trained at Alger as a semiconductor analyst before becoming head of the technology team and began her career as a portfolio manager in 2012. In high school, she was. No, I'm just kidding. All right, well, welcome to the show. Anchor, Are you excited?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Fired up for this?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I totally am.

[Josh Brown]

All right, so we're going to have some fun. We're going to talk big picture.

[Michael Batnick]

Encore.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

We're told it is pronounced encore. Like, like, encore. Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

All right, I apologize. Let's do it that way instead. Are you sure, though? Because I like the way that I did it. All right. Encore. I want to start with, like, the big picture stuff that everyone is talking about today, but then we're going to go much more in depth on semiconductors and your, like, sort of your expertise. Michael and I have so many questions that we want to ask you, and some of them will be like, a Wall street person trying to understand the chip business better. But some of them might even be insightful questions. And I'm certain by the end of this recording, all of our audience will be much more knowledgeable about that area of the market. Sounds good.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah. I hope I can answer all your questions.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, question one. What is the fastest land mammal? No, I'm just kidding.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

A cheetah.

[Josh Brown]

All right, can we talk about your approach to investing? Just generally speaking, how do you manage your funds and how do you think about your role as a portfolio manager?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, I mean look, Alger is a growth manager. We've been a growth manager since the 60s. The idea of growth was really incepted by Fred Alger and is that right? Yeah, like he was one of the first growth managers, I think ever. And so when, when he incepted what growth is, it really came in two different forms. Like the essence of it was where is the change? Because oftentimes where there's change, there's unrecognized opportunity. And if you can recognize that change before the market, then you make a lot of money. So that is the core of what we look for is an incredible amount of change or just change in general. And that comes in two buckets. One what we call high unit volume growth, which is a typical growth company that is having high revenue growth and they're, you know, disrupting the market in some way. Typical. You know, they may or may not have a lot of cash flow right now, but they're growing into it.

[Josh Brown]

This is what will attract your attention to a stock.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. So it's a high top line growth. And the other side of the equation makes us a little bit different in our philosophy relative to most growth managers because it's what we call life cycle change. And these are companies that have already been through their growth initiative. They've probably saturated out their markets and then they have to figure out who they are. Right. They've grown up and they're like, do I have more growth left in me or do I like what do I do from here?

[Josh Brown]

There are some great examples of that.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Great example.

[Josh Brown]

Isn't Apple an example of that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Apple's an example of that. Microsoft is an example of that. You know, Western didge right now is an example of that.

[Michael Batnick]

Ah, Western digit.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

The ipps are.

[Josh Brown]

Nvidia is an example of.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. So it's as these companies try and reinvent themselves. Danaher was an example of this. Right. So it's almost as if they have to figure out how they're going to grow again or not grow. Right. But we're looking for the ones who are inflecting positively on growth. And what's interesting about that leg of the philosophy is that oftentimes those are incredibly low multiple stocks and people will say why are you buying value? And what I say in response is no, this isn't value, this is unrecognized growth.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, I like that. The pitfall there, a lot of companies try to reinvent themselves and can't.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's Right. And so part of that thesis is, you know, what kind of management team do you have and are they capable of actually turning around the ship? I mean, so think about Microsoft. When Satya came on, you kind of have to hear what he's saying and then see what he's doing in order to execute on the next decade of growth. So that's really what we're looking at. The management team is crucial for executing that kind of strategy.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. And then away from the company itself, every once in a while in the markets, we have a moment where an innovative new technology emerges and the entire world changes right before our eyes. So obviously we're talking about AI today and I'd just love to hear your take on where you think we are in the AI story. And are you still as excited about it now as you might have been three years ago when that change first came along and we got the original LLMs and people started talking about it for the first time?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, I think my excitement and my awe of the capabilities has only increased over the last few years. I mean, I remember three years ago we wrote a paper called AI and the Declining Cost to Create. And in order to write that paper, there was a lot of research that needed to be done. I remember talking to a lot of AI natives, people who are in the AI supply chain, talking to them about the capability of what was possible, what is happening today is happening what I thought would happen two or three years from now. But you know, the timelines have been pulled in and in part because the capability is just exponential, something specific that's

[Josh Brown]

happening today, or you're just saying like the pace of it.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I think the, like agents, agents today and what they're capable of today I thought were gonna happen, you know, in 28.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And that capability would come in 28, not necessarily today. And so I would, you know, oftentimes as analysts, we think linearly and the market thinks linearly, but we are in a time of exponential growth. And so it's really hard to get your arms around what exponential actually means and what the end point is.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so for me, it's been, I mean, it's a continuous learning process. I have never slept less and worked more because there's just, every day there's new updates that are happening and there's just something new to learn.

[Josh Brown]

What's like the most jaw dropping example of an agentic product or something that you've gotten a glimpse at where you just said, oh my God, we really are living in the future.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I'll tell you, the weekend that Open Claw came out, I didn't sleep.

[Josh Brown]

Not that far. Not that two months ago.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That was February, and I had taken my sons on the ski team and I had to wake up and get him ready. And I stayed up the entire night doing.

[Josh Brown]

Doing what? Playing with it or reading about it?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I was reading about it. And at the time I was at. I was, you know, I had a phone. I was at someone's ski house. And so I didn't really have access to the capability of. Of what it could do. But. And I. And I tried to launch one at home, to be completely honest. And, you know, it was kind of a mess. I was a little bit afraid of the security aspect of it. And. But then. Then Perplexity Computer came, and that was probably a month ago.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, Perplexity Computer, what is that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Perplexity Computer is almost like openclaw, but it doesn't have all of the functionality because it won't go log in and do things for you after having logged in. Right. So it will again go do things like I built an app, and in that app, I was having a really hard time publishing it and kind of putting or putting payments into it, and Perplexity Computer completed the task for me.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so you have this thing paying bills for you on the Internet.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Well, this thing, I mean, as I was telling Mike before, I have a daughter who's going to college. And the entire college process was so horrible. Oh, I thought that no one should ever say more. No one should ever have to go through that.

[Josh Brown]

I know.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so we hired these college counselors. So I just recreated it using an AI bot.

[Josh Brown]

The what? The Common app. Filling out the Common app.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It's the Common app the colleges. And it basically just guides your child through the entire application process.

[Josh Brown]

And you feel comfortable enough that it's doing exactly what a traditional college advisor would do.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I do.

[Josh Brown]

Really?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I mean, we worked with three different college advisors. I would say, you know, this is

[Josh Brown]

your first one going, yes. Okay. That's a lot of guts that you have. Cause you haven't been through the process before.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

But now that I saw was like. And it was actually my daughter's idea. She's like, you know, there's a lot of kids that can't get a counselor. That's true. Why don't we democratize this process?

[Josh Brown]

That's true.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so on one of the snowy weekends, we couldn't do anything. So I started building this app.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. So it's filling out the Common app with your kid and she's interacting with it. And it's not telling her what schools to apply to, but helping her organize all the things she has to do for each school.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Well, it goes through and it asks you questions. Like, it asks you 12 pretty deep questions. I think all of us should answer these questions. Cause it tells you a lot about yourself.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And then it uses those questions. You tell it. You put in all your stats, you tell it what colleges you want to apply to. It takes the questions and just organizes it for you. So it has version control. You can send it to your parents or your counselor for comments. But it has something called strategic intelligence that allows the kid to say, like, how am I supposed to answer this question? You know, given my background, given my stats, given what I've been involved with, how is the best way, like, what should I really be saying? And so it basically allows as explaining this.

[Josh Brown]

I'm starting to think, like, the colleges should almost force the kids applying to apply via AI interaction to prove that they're gonna be ready for the world that's coming or that's already here. Quite frankly, it almost seems like this should be part of the process.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, I mean, I think it should be. I built it. So, you know, I think the point is, like, not necessarily the app and how it will, you know, can really change the experience of applying to college, but the fact that, like, I've never coded before.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And I built this in probably it took me like, 60 hours to build it. That's a.

[Michael Batnick]

That's a long time, actually.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I know it was three weekends.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, but she's never quoted before, so without it, it would have taken you 60 years.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's. It would have been. It would have been infinite because I would never have done it.

[Josh Brown]

You just wouldn't know where to start.

[Michael Batnick]

So based on what you said earlier about the type of companies that you buy, these companies are experiencing exponential growth. There's nowhere near saturation. I mean, they just started based on. I guess, let's use like, the most recent round, anthropic, raised at $800 billion. Would this be interesting to you? Or is it, like, too early in their growth phase?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So, interestingly enough, we recently participated in the last round. And that last round three weeks ago was at 380 billion.

[Michael Batnick]

My bad.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

OpenAI was 800 and OpenAI was 850, I think.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, so. Same way.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So we did actually participate in that round. And in part, what's happening is. I mean, we have never before, in our. In the course of the market, seen companies that are staying private till they're almost a trillion dollars. And so there's a lot of value that our clients aren't really capable of touching. And so we're actually going and finding really great companies that we believe in that we think will grow in the private markets that have a road to IPO over the next two to three years.

[Michael Batnick]

Which vehicle is this in?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It's actually across all our funds. And so as part of the, I guess the 40 ACT funds, we're able to take 15% of the fund and into private.

[Michael Batnick]

And is this the first time in the history of Alger that you guys have done this?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No, we've done it before. Like, we were early investors in Palantir back In, I think 2012, 13, something like that. And we were investors in Chime. So it's not something that we've done often, but we are seeing a really interesting pipeline of companies now.

[Josh Brown]

If you have interest in, like, if you have companies going to $500 billion before they even file an S1 and you're a growth investor, on the one hand, it's sad that they're not public and more people can't get access. But part of me feels like this helps make the case for active management, at least for growth funds. Like, growth funds should be doing this as a differentiator versus, you know, whatever their benchmark is.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. Well, I mean, we should be doing it in part because there's so much value for our clients that is residual and we're not able to capture it in the public markets.

[Josh Brown]

And then these things come public and you have another decision to make.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Josh Brown]

You are up a lot. Do we stick around? I mean, you probably have a lockup or whatever it is, but yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And look, we haven't had to contend with that quite yet.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And we'll see. It'll be really interesting. As anthropic and Databricks and OpenAI come public, what happens?

[Michael Batnick]

Well, yeah, because you don't know how the public market will react to it. Like, if the public market vomits, you might buy more.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Michael Batnick]

So what sort of access financial information do you have as investors in these companies?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

We get depending. Depending on which company it is. It's quarterly. We get quarterly statements now, you know, not all of them are like, have full. They won't have conference calls. But we have access to the management teams or someone at the company.

[Josh Brown]

Neither is Berkshire Hathaway, so don't worry. I want to talk big picture. You say that we are short compute Globally, everyone is short compute.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Everyone's short compute computer.

[Josh Brown]

For how long do you think that persists? Because one of the things, if you're invested in a lot of the stocks in the space, one of the things is like, am I going to be the last buyer? Am I going to buy? Right before all of a sudden there's a glut and everyone overbuilt and the capex plan start to moderate. And that's everyone's biggest fear. Arguably, that's kept people out of this for three years. Some people. But how do you think about that compute shortage and how much more Runway there might be?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So I think of it in many different aspects. First of all, I'm going to go back to that first thing I said, that we think linearly. We've been trained to think linearly. You give someone two data points, what do they do?

[Josh Brown]

They connect them. They connect them and then they extrapolate it between here and there.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And it's also. They extrapolate it. Right. But what happens if in fact, that growth is exponential? And again, like. And this is why people are struggling with the capex numbers and the growth numbers, because we really haven't experienced exponential growth. And so, you know, that's one aspect I do believe that this is exponential kind of growth in the amount of compute that we need. And that is predicated on the fact that intelligence is. When you start to build a neural network, it is an exponential problem.

[Josh Brown]

Especially my intelligence. It's a hugely exponential problem. I have always said this, right? In other words, the amount. Because when you talk about neural and you talk about. It's the amount of connections.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Josh Brown]

And the amount of connections is infinite. It's a big number multiplied by another big number.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And for every layer beyond, it's an exponential problem. Right. So for every, every connection here has an exponential kind of more connections beyond it. So I think that when you think about how we can use intelligence and as we try to recreate intelligence, that demand is. It's difficult to fathom, but it is very real. So think about agents. You know, a year ago we were worried about a, you know, oh, are we in a bubble?

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Then we got agents. And right now we're all stopped out on the agents that we can use and the tokens we can use. And you know, people are trying to token max and their bills are getting out of control. Why is that? Because once we can ask someone to do or something to do something for us that is productive, we will Deploy

[Josh Brown]

it the CTO at Uber said they already blew their entire 2026 budget on compute. And it's like, April, did you see that news?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I did see that.

[Josh Brown]

What do you make of that? Do you think that they just have the guts to say it and there are a lot of companies in that same position because of the cost of all this compute? Yes, you do.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I think there are a lot of companies that want to use more of the compute, and now that it's becoming accessible and democratized, because you don't have to be a coder to use it, and anyone can use it. I mean, usage I do think will go through the roof if they have the tokens.

[Josh Brown]

We're going to do some market stuff. But to segue there, does having the level of conviction that you do in the exponential opportunity enable you to live through the periodic drawdowns, not just for tech and AI, but just like, market wide? Is that a big part of your portfolio manager Persona?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's. I don't know if I have a portfolio manager Persona per se, but it

[Josh Brown]

seems like you're very. It seems like you have this, like, this innate bullishness about the possibilities, and so maybe that would enable you to endure more volatility than somebody who is either skeptical or doesn't have that same level of conviction.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Well, let me give you an example. In February, I got pretty worried about the market, and it was kind of like a guttural instinct of something doesn't feel right. We're starting to put ships into the seas near Iran, like, and instead of just sitting there, despite my bullishness, you know, I raised 7% cash in our. In our concentrated equity fund. Yeah, right.

[Josh Brown]

Not by selling anthropic.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Not by selling anthropic.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so it was kind of like more of like a take. You take everything across the portfolio just to raise the cash to buffer yourself for volatility. That doesn't mean necessarily that, you know, you're incredibly negative on the AI trade. In fact, through the course of that period of time, I've only become more bullish. So that doesn't mean there won't be volatility with that trade, because not everyone believes the same thing I do.

[Josh Brown]

Well, you can raise cash because you have the impression that others are gonna sell and that that's gonna open up opportunities.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Josh Brown]

And that doesn't make you bearish. It just makes you, I think, cognizant of the fact that other people are gonna create those opportunities for you. And you have to have cash to Take advantage of that.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And you know what? If you can sell something for a profit and buy it back 30, 40% cheaper, you do that any day.

[Michael Batnick]

I have a dumb question that I know Josh is thinking, but he's afraid to ask you, so I'll do it. When you and everybody says, we're short compute. Cause everybody's saying the same thing. What literally does that mean? Like, where are the bottlenecks? And what does that mean for investors?

[Josh Brown]

I'll handle this. Electricity is a very big bottleneck.

[Michael Batnick]

Stop, stop, stop. It's enough of you now.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Go ahead.

[Josh Brown]

Well, I mean, the unit of measure that we're talking about is tokens, right? Okay. So for Michael's benefit and some of the people in our audience, could you

[Michael Batnick]

please answer the question?

[Josh Brown]

No, no, I'm letting her.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Josh really wants to answer it.

[Josh Brown]

Why. Why do we. Why do we measure this in tokens? What does. Our audience is like 90% people that are either investing for other people or for themselves, and just 10% absolute lunatics. What does the audience need to understand about the way that you're thinking about the compute shortage and why tokens matter to this conversation?

[Michael Batnick]

And are all tokens created equal?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Ooh, that's a really great question.

[Josh Brown]

I have best questions I've ever heard.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So tokens are a unit of intelligence. And think of it as. I mean, technically a token is two or three letters. So you send out a question and it's 100 letters long. That's 30 tokens. Right. That's technically what, like, your input token would be. But really, you should think of tokens as being units of compute. And the more. The more thinking are the units of thinking and units of intelligence. And the more intelligence you need, the more tokens you use.

[Josh Brown]

It's as simple as that, because not just your. Your prompt, but then the response coming back to you.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Michael Batnick]

And the tokens come from where you buy them, from these companies.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

The tokens is just think about as, like, if your chip is a flywheel or if it's a factory. You know, this is why R. Jensen calls it an AI factory. So it's a factory where you're saying, I'm putting in three tokens, I'm getting out a lot of intelligence, or I'm putting in this many tokens, and I need a lot of intelligence out. It has to grind through it. And that grinding is compute.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

A computer literally has to carry out its calculations.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Josh Brown]

And then reply back.

[Michael Batnick]

So I guess the question is, it's like, all right, so I pay a monthly subscription to these companies, to these LLMs, for the privilege of using the compute. And the bottleneck is where, like, they can't get enough because Nvidia can't get enough chips because Taiwan Semi can't manufacture enough of them. Like, where, where is it getting caught?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I, I, right now it's, you don't have enough chips. Right.

[Josh Brown]

Still.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

You, you still don't have enough chips. Although there's other parts of the supply chain now that are getting, that are becoming short. So DRAM is, you see what's happening in the DRAM market. DRAM pricing's, you know, grown, I think, 100% year over year. And that is unusual for a commodity.

[Michael Batnick]

Was that foreseeable for you? Did you know that was gonna happen?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

You know what? Early on, like, two, two years ago, I was like, God, this is gonna really pull on dram. But the memory market was horrible. So quite honestly, I thought I was wrong. I was like, my gosh, I'm not seeing a response in the memory market. I'm wrong.

[Josh Brown]

You were so ahead of your time that nobody else had gotten to that conclusion.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, that's so interesting. The market was giving you a wrong signal, and you just thought it was so obvious that it would have priced it in. So you thought you were wrong and the market was wrong.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, and I thought I was wrong. And then it basically just took off at the September of last year. So Micron was at $85 in August of last year.

[Josh Brown]

Where is it now?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

450. Right. So it wasn't until just now that the market was like, oh, my God, we have this massive DRAM shortage because the pricing had just started to take off.

[Michael Batnick]

Micron was like $175 billion market cap. I think it's like 400 now or something, maybe even more.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Is it really? I only know the share price. I don't know what the market cap is anymore. But these things move so fast, it's hard to keep track of the market caps.

[Josh Brown]

You know what, the thing with the memory stocks, I try to explain this to somebody that doesn't know finance or stocks at all.

[Michael Batnick]

515. Sorry to interrupt.

[Josh Brown]

And market cap, is that nuts? It's a half a trillion. No big deal. No big deal. I try to explain this to somebody who is not in our industry because they're like, should I buy Sandisk or whatever? I'm like, yeah, I don't care what you do. He's like, no, no, no. Like, explain, Explain it. Explain it. Explain it. So rather than try to go into, like, memory chips and shortages and it's cyclical, but maybe this time it's not cyclical. I explained it. I explained it to him in a language that he would understand. I said, think about, like, restaurants in New York, right? So we have a restaurant called the Corner Store. It's the hottest restaurant in the world. You literally cannot get in. I've been there twice. Not to brag. People line up at 3 o' clock in the afternoon on a Thursday and, like, hold places for people. And that's just to put their name down so they could sit at the bar. Okay. You, like, cannot go in this place. It's like Taylor Swift's diner. Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Was it good?

[Josh Brown]

No, it's great. It's unbelievable. But the point is, I mean, it's not. It's not like the. It's.

[Michael Batnick]

It's very good.

[Josh Brown]

It's roast beef sandwiches. Like, it's not like you're not gonna fall out of your chair. And that's the point. There are 500 other restaurants in the same neighborhood, but people aren't lined up out the door of any of these other ones or maybe one or two of these other ones. And so my point was, like, right now, so many people recognize the opportunity in this small handful of stocks. There's like a line to buy them and they sell off and then they recover just as fast because just everyone wants to be there. It's not that you can't buy another stock. It's not that you can't go to another restaurant. There's only one corner store. And if you open five corner stores on the same street, all next door to each other, each one of them would have a thousand people waiting online because right now everyone just believes these stocks are going to keep doing what they've been doing, or that restaurant is like the only place that they want to be. But it, it changes over time. So if you're about to buy it today, don't look at what the chart has done over the last year because it's not going to repeat. Or if it does repeat, it would be extremely anomalous.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So the one contention I would have with that analogy is that the corner

[Michael Batnick]

store, you stupid bastard.

[Josh Brown]

No, please give it to me.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Is that, you know, you're saying there could be many other corner stores around, but in reality, because these are technology plays, there's actually, for each technology segment, there's only a handful of. Of.

[Josh Brown]

But you and I are old enough to remember when memory was the ultimate semiconductor Related commodity.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Okay, but let's talk through that life cycle.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So when I started, you know, my career, There was like 12 different memory companies. Three were in Taiwan, they were funded by the Taiwanese government. There was like three in Korea. Funded. There was Micron. I've even forgotten all of the memory companies now over time, because of the nature of how difficult it is to. And this is actually a story of the semiconductor industry. Because it was so hard to actually produce things at a smaller and smaller node. They were all forced to consolidate.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so what happened? We basically came to this point in time as a consolidated industry where you basically have three players providing dram.

[Josh Brown]

Sandis got bought by somebody and then came back on.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. It got by Western Digital split.

[Josh Brown]

That's right.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And then spun back out.

[Josh Brown]

These stocks were 8, 9, 10 times earnings.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Josh Brown]

When there was a glut in memory, you could not give these stocks away.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I mean, there's eight times earnings in August. Eight, nine times earnings in August. And so the, the thing is like there's only three companies you can buy to play memory. Right. To play dram. And so there is no alternative.

[Josh Brown]

And only three suppliers to the industry. Forget about the stocks. Like the product itself.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. There's only three of them.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So there is actually. The reason there's a line out the door is because if you want to play memory, there is actually no alternative.

[Michael Batnick]

When you say play, you mean from the investor's point of view.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

From an investor's point of view.

[Michael Batnick]

So Western did in January 25th had a market cap of 15 billion and it's now 125 almost. Is this a bubble?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No. And in part what's happened is like think about the data that is produced. So this, this is a very interesting.

[Josh Brown]

The problem is that Michael can only think linearly.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

You have to think exponentially.

[Josh Brown]

Michael, that's why I love him. But

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

so think, think about all the data that's being produced. There's video, there's these agents that are producing things for you that need to now be stored. So all of that data has to go somewhere. Now the hard disk drive industry is very similar to the memory industry. There's two players, Seagate and Western Ditch. And they're not adding capacity, they're not actually adding physical units. They're increasing the density of their hard disk drives, which is how they add capacity. But they're not doing it at a rate that is going to cause a supply demand imbalance.

[Josh Brown]

Right. And that's Another business nobody wanted to be in five years ago.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, I love hearing you, hearing you say it's not a bubble. Cuz these aren't your biggest positions. So it would be very easy for you to say like yeah, that shit is really stupid.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, well I do think the bubble talk is really stupid.

[Michael Batnick]

Go.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

But we can get to that.

[Josh Brown]

Name names. No, I'm just kidding. Why is it stupid though? Because to take the contra side, at a certain point these stocks will not be rising at the same rate that they have been. So it could be that it's not a bubble for the products and the chips, but it might be a bubble for the investments people are making and.

[Michael Batnick]

Or it could be a bubble in demand for compute because there won't be

[Josh Brown]

revenue at the part that you see,

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

that's the part that I don't believe. At least through 26, 27 and into 28. Based on the CapEx that we expect, I don't think that we'll be in supply demand balance for compute. We have that kind of visibility. I don't know if 2030 is going to be that way depending on how much capex we put in the ground. It's almost like asking me in 1996 whether or not we're going to be in a bubble in 2000. Well, I mean, I don't know. You tell me where the valuations are.

[Josh Brown]

You can't predict what people will do, you can't predict what humans will do with their money. It's impossible to know what they'll do three years from now. But based on the fundamentals of the announced capex over the next couple of years, you think the market is still in an imbalance, benefiting the sellers.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. Okay, that's right. And so, but, but the reason that we have to reconsider all this bubble talk is yes, the stocks have gone up, yes it's gone from 15 to 125 billion. But look what the numbers have done. I mean just in the last three months, Western Dig's numbers have gone from 10 to 25. Wow. Yeah, right.

[Michael Batnick]

Which numbers?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

The earnings numbers for 26 or 27. One of those. Like 10 to $25.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, it's like a different company.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It's a completely different company. And this is classic life cycle change for us. Right. Where the industry is changing because of the market changing like Nvidia for a long time people are like, isn't this a bubble? Isn't it over for Nvidia? Well, tell me what the right numbers are for Nvidia. Tell me what the right numbers are for Micron and Western Dig and I'll tell you if we're in a bubble or not.

[Josh Brown]

And core. One of the things have trouble with though is pattern matching and their over eagerness to say this thing looks like that thing. And I won't even go into like.com stuff because it's played out. But just in the last few years the solar stocks came and went, the electric vehicle stocks came and went. We had 20 electric vehicle related IPOs in 2021, 2022 and a lot of them literally went to zero. Most of them are single digits even today. And that's despite their fundamentals having improved. So people say here we go again. They're bidding these stocks up like crazy. They think A, B, C. If A, B and C don't come through, these stocks are all gonna crash.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Okay, so let me comment on that in that the first thing how do

[Josh Brown]

you differentiate is the question.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So tell me just about the bubble and people who often talk about this being in a bubble right now. What I have found is that sometimes it's almost easier if you don't understand something be like oh it must be a bubble.

[Josh Brown]

I agree with that 100%.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so there's a lot of like portfolio managers that, that I have talked to and met with and CIOs that. And it's interesting because the PMs are often like they came from healthcare or consumer and getting your arms around what is happening with that kind of background is really hard.

[Josh Brown]

Is that part of your advantage as a growth manager? Is it native to this sector?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Personally, I think so because it seems so obvious to me like what is about. I've had, I've never had this much clarity in my career and in part because it's, it's pretty clear what's about to happen.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so you think, you think that it's people that because we say bubble talk is code for I missed out or I'm so smart and these people just made all this money in xyz it's impossible, therefore it must be a bubble. Like that's how people think.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I know, but that's kind of crazy.

[Josh Brown]

I agree, but.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right, so that's on the bubble part that I thought was important to highlight because I do think when I hear people talk about a bubble I always ask tell me where you think it's a bubble. Is it just the Capex numbers? Okay, let me justify. Why don't you justify why don't I Justify to you that capex number. And I can.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

So wait, can you.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So first of all, can you. I can in a second. Let me get to a solar question, because the solar question is a really important one. Solar was a massive market. And in 2000, when was it 2000 when we had this company called Trina Solar and JK Solar, there was all

[Josh Brown]

these, oh, the Chinese panel makers, the Canadian panel.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right, right. And all of those guys, csiq, Canadian Solar, they came to market and I was particularly like, I graduated from Berkeley, I loved alternative energy, I thought oil was evil. And I would go to these meetings and the guy was like, yeah, we basically built the solar company in my garage. And I was like, that's so weird. You built a solar company in your garage and you're IPOing for $2.4 billion, which now seems like nothing. But I'm like, how does that work? And I was just a young analyst, I was like, there's something wrong with this. Like, if I can go, I'm a material scientist, I can just go build

[Josh Brown]

a 2.5, spin up a photovoltaic cell right now.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And so like, why do these guys get to win? And so what happened there was the technological hurdle was so low that as long as there was any profit to be had, it would basically get deprecated.

[Josh Brown]

It became a manufacturing challenge to just make them the cheapest. And of course China will always win. But then there was also this big government subsidy component to it which, you know, would come and go. But I just like, people lost a lot of money. People lost a lot of money. So. All right, so in this case, the dollars being spent on this are real and growing. The profitability of it is high from the outset. It's not like one of these things where everybody has to lose money in order to subsidize it. A few companies are willing to do that, but a lot of these companies are coming out of cash flow in their capex.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Absolutely.

[Josh Brown]

And that makes it very different.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And I think what you have to remember is if you look across the entire supply chain, because from 2000 to 2020, we have had the entire supply chain has been consolidated. So think about that, right? You had semicap equipment consolidated over the last 20 years. The box makers, the box makers consolidated, the chip makers consolidated. I mean, even the networking guys consolidated. And so you're coming at this problem from. And why do they consolidate? Not because they had to, it's just that technology became so complicated that in order to go from like a 6 inch wafer to an 8 inch wafer. You almost had to join forces because the R and D budgets were out of control.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. And that happened for the chip guys too. To do a tape out, which is basically spin up a new chip, the cost of doing a tape out was going up, you know, 3, 4, 5x for every single job you fit.

[Josh Brown]

All the transistors do all the testing.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. So the way to do it is you consolidated the market so you just had more scale. So the RD budgets were, were amortized over more revenue, as you say.

[Josh Brown]

I can't remember the last like chip IPO, Astera Labs. And when was that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

2024.

[Josh Brown]

But that's the point. I remember an era where there was a semiconductor IPO every week.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

And it's just we don't have that.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And now there are like just a handful of semiconductor companies. You know, there used to be 45,

[Josh Brown]

all using the same three foundries.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And really one that matters.

[Michael Batnick]

So can I ask you this? I think the biggest question for investors, if we could see into the future that would put this debate to bed, is the transition from the hyperscalers from asset light to asset heavy spending. All of this money and I see you're getting ready to cook and I can't wait for you to jump in like Amazon, which is one of your biggest positions. All right, so they're spending whatever they're spending on capex. Are they going to get a return on their investment that will allow for this to keep going?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So what I would say is I can't 100% say that they will get the same return that they expect. And going into this year, this was my number one. Like back in before Meta put out their big Cap X number, I remember talking to our team and saying, I'm really worried that the hyperscalers are going to zero cash flow. And that handoff of we value things on cash flow. As growth managers, we want to see the cash flow.

[Josh Brown]

They're reinvesting all of their cash flow.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

They're reinvesting. All of them are investing all of their cash flow. And that handoff can be a tricky one because whenever you have a valuation regime handoff to going from PE to cash flow or cash flow to pe, from EV to sales to earnings, there is always a period of tricky. We're living through it and we're living through it right now, which is why they haven't done anything for a while.

[Josh Brown]

That's why they derated. We used to prize how asset light they were and how high their cash flow was. And now the story's different. Now they're in the most massive investment life cycle we've ever seen and there is no more free cash because they're plowing it right back into data centers.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And what I would liken it to is when they started building out the cloud, right? So in 2000, 20, 15, 12, 13, 14. Right. So Amazon started building their cloud probably a little bit earlier than that because they were doing it for internal use. They were spending a lot. We just didn't know because it was kind of inside of their.

[Josh Brown]

It was Amazon. They weren't even telling people it was a different time.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And even Microsoft, if you look at how they spent, they were able to kind of build this cloud, although they spent a lot of money.

[Michael Batnick]

But it wasn't like this sort of spend, was it?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It wasn't this kind of spend, but only because the cloud didn't come as fast as AI has come. So if we basically had said, oh, let me give you the capability of the Cloud with the 5G network and, you know, give it to you immediately, the spend would have been significant. And that's what's happening with AI. Like, the time horizons have compressed so much and the capability is. So it's exponentially growing.

[Michael Batnick]

So what is Amazon spending the money on and where is the return gonna come from?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Well, they're spending the data centers, chips cooling, you know, the entire shebang of, you know, how you have to build up a dataset.

[Josh Brown]

What's the Amazon chips? What's the Amazon relationship with Anthropic in your mind as an investor? Like, how key is that? It's like, because I remember three years ago, Amazon was talking about bedrock AI and saying, we're basically going to be a bring your own model. Like anybody can use any AI model they want at AWS and the street like that. And then Anthropic just took off for the enterprise and all of a sudden it started being more like, well, you know, if you want to play anthropic, the way to do it is via Amazon because of that relationship. So is that, is that part of why you are so bullish on Amazon or. Not necessarily.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No. Look, I think Amazon, if you look at the valuation for Amazon today on a pe, on a GAAP PE basis, and I forget exactly what it is, but it is absolutely not egregious.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah,

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

it's at teens for. On. On an earnings basis, which is maybe

[Josh Brown]

the lowest valuation you've ever been able to Buy the stock for. Since it's been published.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. I mean, compare it to Costco or a Walmart. It's, I think, 10 points lower.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Than either of those. So is that. Is that really kind of the right valuation for a grocery store?

[Josh Brown]

It is a grocery store.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It is a grocery store. That's right. But it's a. It's a very efficient grocery store.

[Josh Brown]

The partnership with Anthropic and the investment, like, how important is that to your thesis for why AWS could. Could be one of the biggest beneficiaries of AI, or is it not that important?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I mean, it's important because it drives that. It drives the top line for it for aws. Right, right. So, I mean, if AWS is going to grow in the mid to high 30s this year, and part of that is because of Anthropic.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So it is important in that aspect, but really for the duration, because Anthropic is going to work with other companies as well.

[Josh Brown]

They do and they will.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

All right? And so it can't be the only crux. So Amazon, look, they have Trainium, just like Google has their tpu. Amazon has Trainium. And so it is important to own the stack.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Because it does lower your cost of compute.

[Josh Brown]

Andy Jassy was talking about Trainium and some of the other chips that Amazon is making and saying if we were to be valued or if people were to think about them as though we were selling these chips to third parties, it would be like a $50 billion business. Do you think that. Do you think that the street is starting to. I don't want to say rerate, because it hasn't really, but do you think the street is starting to feel a little bit more bullish about Amazon's A, ability to produce chips, but B, more importantly, potential willingness to become a big chip seller given the shortage of Compute. Like, could that be a whole new leg to why the stock should go higher? And I own the stock. So I want you to consider my question through that lens.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's an interesting question.

[Michael Batnick]

She owns more than you do.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

You definitely own the stock.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I own this stock, too. So what I would say to that is that, look, it's an important aspect of the technology. They've been working on Trainium for a long time. I think they are behind the curve, actually, and they are catching up. So Trainium 4 is still.

[Josh Brown]

Delete all of that.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It's still an okay chip. It's not a fantastic chip. I think TPU is a fantastic chip.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, that Competes with Nvidia Tensor processing unit from Alphabet.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And mind you, they've been working on that for five years longer than Amazon's been working on their Trainium products.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So Amazon will catch up. I think what is exciting about Amazon on that aspect, not that they're going to sell their chips, is that they can effectively make a compute layer that is cheaper. So you can do compute on a Trainium that will be cheaper for you to run, potentially.

[Josh Brown]

So more supply for a supply constrained market.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Well, I think it's just more so if you think about the stack. So if you go and say, I'm gonna use AWS with a Trainium chip to do a certain workload, you know, might it be cheaper if done on a Trainium? It may be.

[Josh Brown]

Versus a very broad, powerful GPU that maybe is not necessary. Overkill.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Josh Brown]

For that one task.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And it goes to your question about tokens actually, like, are all tokens created equal? We didn't answer that question, did we?

[Josh Brown]

And the answer is no.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Okay, so all tokens are not created equal. Right. I, I fundamentally believe that this market is going to. There's going to be tokens that you pay a lot for and there's going to be tokens that, you know, when I ask GPT what the weather is going to be.

[Josh Brown]

Right. First, help me create an atomic bomb.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. I understand like a very different. And so why should we be paying the same dollar value for each of those tokens and not quite the atomic bomb. I don't ask it to do that. You might.

[Josh Brown]

All right, get my kid into Princeton. I got it. Same idea. No, I think that's a really important part of the conversation is, you know, the initial build is like, all right, it's GPUs. These GPUs are insanely powerful and probably over. It's like putting a lion in your house to catch a mouse. If your daily use of Claude is like, what should I have for lunch today?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

So the market will figure out what to use for what. Or maybe already has, you're saying.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. It hasn't figured it out quite yet. Because all tokens are still kind of the same token value.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so, you know, I do think drug discovery tokens will have a completely different value in the market than, you know, your educational tokens.

[Josh Brown]

So that won't impact me as a user of these LLMs, but that will impact the way the enterprise version is being priced for corporate customers.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. And I also think it might be it might impact what model you use. Right. So.

[Josh Brown]

Well, so people are already figuring that out. People are already saying, I use this for this. I use this for the regular people, not professionals, I would imagine professionals, they go way more in depth on which of the company's operations are we carrying out here versus there.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. Or. Or an app that you build. Right. If you're gonna build an app for drug discovery, you might, you know, you may. You may price the app at a level that it allows you to use the most advanced tokens or the most kind of valuable tokens.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. All right. So the products will be in part priced on how or which tokens are being utilized.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Michael Batnick]

So these companies keep saying that not spending enough is an existential threat. They have to spend. And they're able to say that because we're in a bull market. And even though some of these stocks haven't done amazing in the very short term, like, investors are still giving them the benefit of the doubt. Is there. It sounds like. It sounds like there's. You don't think there's a risk that they might say on a call, hey, you know what? We're actually going to take our foot off the gas pedal. But, like, is there a chance that the market. And I know we're speculating here that maybe the market could force their hand? Like, if Microsoft didn't stop going down and the Stock is down 45%, at what point does Satya say, all right, guys, like, maybe we should chill out

[Josh Brown]

with all the Metaverse example? Like, the stock market enforced the end of Metaverse spending. I think we all would agree on that. Like, that he probably would have kept going two more quarters had the stock not been in a 70% free fall. Now Zuckerberg controls all the votes, so it really had to just be his acknowledgement that all of these investors who are selling the stock can't all be wrong. That's the concern there.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I think, again, it's very different than the Metaverse, because the Metaverse, the promise of the Metaverse.

[Josh Brown]

I know. Believe in it. By the way, credit to me.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I actually believe in the Metaverse still. But you need to.

[Josh Brown]

How much Virtual Land did you buy in the Metaverse?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

None.

[Josh Brown]

Did you buy a beach house next to Snoop Dogg's virtual.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No, I just played Roblox with my kids. But the Metaverse is actually. I do think it can be a reality. It just needed the capability of AI to get there too early in 2020. I remember doing a little thing for alger on the metaverse. And I said, this is a 2030 event, right? It's 10 years out. So he was trying to invest in 2020 or 20. When was that? 21.

[Josh Brown]

2020. 2021. Changed the name of the company, right,

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

to basically get to 2030. That was a long period of time.

[Josh Brown]

Also all by him. Also all by himself.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

All by himself with kind of deprecated compute. Right. So he didn't have GPUs then that were going to drive this AI process.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so this is different. This is not that.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So this is different. And in part because, you know, everyone's so worried about the roi, like, will we get the ROI back? And what I would say right now, at this moment in time, they're basically making their money back in 18 months.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, how? What?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So the cost of compute is actually rising right now. If you look at the cost of an H100, it has been rising, it hasn't been going down. And so you look at the compute stack and how the per hour pricing of a chip inside of one of these data centers, the payback is 18 months.

[Josh Brown]

Meaning because the price of the chips is going up.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Josh Brown]

An investment that you might have made 18 months ago. Now you're in the money.

[Michael Batnick]

But wait, is that the right way to measure it?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

For now. But the point is, what is the roi? Right? So if you get paid back your capital in 18 months, then do you really have to justify your ROI? Now? The other thing I think that people miss in this is that they can turn as soon as they see the demand start to decline or get curbed, guess what? They'll turn off their capex.

[Michael Batnick]

And we're just, we're nowhere near, we're nowhere near that.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

But the point is, it's not like the telecom bubbles.

[Josh Brown]

So that's why I want to go next. So this is the other thing the bubble people will say, look at these deal announcements. Every one of them is circular. Every one of them involves a company vendor financing some sort of an investment or paying a customer to pay them back to either buy compute or chips or use of a data center or lease something. And I've heard Jensen deflect that. He's like, of course it's circular. We're all in the same ecosystem doing business with each other. How could it not be so? And I'm sympathetic to that, but what would you say to people that say, oh, I remember the late 1990s when one company needed to make earnings this quarter so they would do a deal and then the next Quarter. The other guy had to make earnings so they would do a reverse deal. I understand this is not the same thing, but how do you answer that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I answer that, but look, every deal has been different. I think that Amazon metadeal worries me more because you're giving away part of your company to say, use my chips and I'm going to give you a chip.

[Josh Brown]

What's the Amazon, what's the Amazon Meta deal?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Not Amazon AMD meta deal.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, okay, right.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So meta. Meta gets 10% of AMD if they get to a certain amount of revenue and AMD chips. Right. So effectively they're giving it for 0% gross margin.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

You know that to me is a little bit more OpenAI. OpenAI Oracle and, and Meta Open and Meta both are both had deals with, with AMD that, that look like this. Nvidia basically seeding the market to enable the market is less worrisome because I mean Nvidia's revenues on, on AI, like the AI based revenues is going to be hundreds of billions of dollars.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So the 2 billion that they gave to Core Weave is like. Are they really enabling their own revenue? Not really.

[Josh Brown]

Well, they're seeking a partner who if that partner is successful, it means years and years and years of future chip sales.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Michael Batnick]

But why is that bad?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Why is that bad?

[Josh Brown]

I don't think it's bad.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It's not bad. I think it's, it's actually common sense.

[Josh Brown]

It's not. Well, we see examples of this in every single industry is another thing to point out. So you see, Pepsi gives a restaurant all kinds of free advertising and banners and things to decorate their bar and therefore sells more Pepsi into that bar for years and years to come. This is just a high tech version of it with billions of dollars, not thousands of dollars, but it's like a fairly common thing.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, that's a great example. I do think you probably see it.

[Josh Brown]

Miller Lite says, here's a billiards table. Put it right in the middle of your bar and the lamp hanging over it is gonna say Miller Lite. And the rest, the tavern owner is like, okay, cool, we have a pool table. They're buying Miller Lite forever. And the bar does better. And like this is obvious stuff.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

We're just talking about it on a much greater scale here.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah. And that's what scares people. I think again, if you think about the magnitude of what's happening, all my

[Josh Brown]

metaphors have to do with eating and drinking. I don't know if you're Picking up on this. So the audience definitely is.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So the, you know, the magnitude of what's happening here is just, it's hard to fathom. Again, we go back to that. Like it's really hard to think how big and how massive this change is. And that's why I think people are just struggling with it.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so give the audience, give the audience three stocks that will double before the end of the year.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Oh no, I'm just kidding.

[Josh Brown]

Can we talk about like some of the actual investments that you're making in the public markets?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Sure.

[Josh Brown]

All right, so we're looking at some of your holdings.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Wait, can, can we go back to one thing?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, shut up, Josh.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So, so one of the things I want to go back to is this fact. Like in 2000, one of the issues with what happened in 2000, 2000 bubble, is the capex that was spent. Spent was long lived assets. So you put it into the ground, you think about like fiber optic cable. You put it in the ground, you spend billions of dollars. And they were effectively long lived assets.

[Josh Brown]

Like nobody needed them for five years.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No one needed them for five years. And then demand fell apart. But you also didn't have the technology to take, to take to make use of those cables.

[Josh Brown]

There's no web video.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

There was no, I mean, do you remember using the Internet in 2000? Yeah, it was a horrible experience.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, it was like chat rooms where you're typing. It was, there's no social media yet. There was no YouTube.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

There was no, I mean you could barely like download a webpage without it, you know, glitching.

[Josh Brown]

Or It'd take like 10 minutes to download a song from Napster.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

Like that was the Internet.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right? I mean, 2004, 2005, like downloading a movie would take two hours. Yeah, it would be a horrible experience. And so we had dreamed the dream in 2000, but we actually didn't have the technology.

[Josh Brown]

Capex was a timing mismatch. That's right before the demand for all that stuff they invested would show up.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And what's really different now is actually all the technology is in place. And it's like I, I've likened this to when I've spoken to advisors just to make it a little bit more tangible. I've likened it to, you know, if you were an F1 car engineer, thought

[Michael Batnick]

you were gonna say Burger King. She's not using food analogies.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I can't think of a good food analogy. But if you were like, you know, an F1 engineer and you dreamt up this Amazing car. And you're like, this is the way it's gonna work. And I think I'm gonna win because, you know, I've dreamt this amazing car up and you get to the race and you have four wheels.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. This time you've actually built the car and the only thing that you're waiting for is gas.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. Or you know, electricity, charge your battery. But like the point is that now the only thing you need is the compute you have.

[Josh Brown]

All the other parts of the tech is here. So therefore the Capex is going directly into something that is currently working.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Michael Batnick]

But speaking of the capex, there's another doctor investor who's on the other side. Dr. Burry says that there's accounting shenanigans which how they're amortizing these expenses.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, I don't think that's right. So he's basically saying, oh, they're using five year depreciation, but there are six year depreciation and they're actually four years. Which is absolutely just incorrect.

[Michael Batnick]

So why is he saying that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I don't know. You should ask him.

[Josh Brown]

He's saying that. So you're saying these chips last a really long time. They might not be the newest, they might not be the newest versions, but

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

a one hundreds are still working.

[Josh Brown]

And those are from eight years, seven years ago.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Those are from 2016. They're from 2021.

[Josh Brown]

66 year old chips are still very actively being used.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I mean, the idea that these computes are just. Or that the chips are going to die in three years, I don't really understand it.

[Josh Brown]

All right, let's do some tickers. So some of your holdings, and I sort of know a little bit about some of these, but why are you bullish on? We'll just go like a few. Tell us about Nebias.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Brown]

What?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's like a big long story, which is really fascinating. I will try to shorten it for you guys.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, keep it to like 90 minutes. I understand that Nebias. My understanding is this was originally part of Yandex, which was the Russian Google.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It wasn't part of Yandex.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, it's what Yandex became.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Nope. So Yandex was the Russian Google.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Headed by a man named Arkady.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. And when the Ukraine in Russia Google searches you.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Josh Brown]

All right, go ahead.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

When, when the Ukraine war happened, you know, he had just a disagreement with the politics.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And you know, he was one of the quote unquote, oligarchs. That, you know, was a sanctioned. But he was also on the outs with Putin. He ends up leaving. 1500 of his engineers end up leaving. I think Arkady paid for all of them to leave. And then he sat there, he's like, Okay, I have $2 billion. What are we gonna do? And they said, the future is really AI. We know how to build data centers. Let's build AI data centers, because we think we can do it better than everyone else.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so, you know, remember they were Yandex, they got delisted.

[Josh Brown]

So it's in Europe now. It's in Belgium, or it's in the Netherlands. Netherlands.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

They're based in the Netherlands. But one day they get this call from the New York Stock Exchange, being like, you're going to get listed on Monday. Right. And they're like, what do you mean? Like, we're like a private company right now. And it was a Thursday, so they worked all weekend. They get listed, and all of a sudden there was this, like, weird ticker on the exchange and Biscuit.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. And I didn't know what it was either.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah. And so, like, I was like, is it a wart? Like, what is this thing?

[Josh Brown]

People were trading it, though.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

People may have. And. But you know what? Initially when people traded was all the people that were stuck in Yandex. Right, right. That were like, thank gosh, I could get out now. And so they're like, get me out. I've been stuck here for years. And then it 10x, but they didn't have it. No one knew what the story was. So they put out this 110 page deck online. And I don't know, I remember hounding them, being like, I need a meeting with you. And they had no time. So I hunted them down in Davos, as one does. As one does. And it was. And I just got to. We got to know the company really, really very well.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so you look at this as. Cause I know they're in autonomous vehicles and they have a lot of stuff going on. But, like, you look at this as a data center play that's domiciled in Europe, but doing business all over the world.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

What I would say is that this is actually potentially the next HyperScaler, the next AI native hyperscaler.

[Josh Brown]

Really?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yes.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, tell us about QXO.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Oh, QXO. QXO is a fantastic company. It's not a typical tech company. Right. But we all know Brad Jacobs. Brad Jacobs was the serial entrepreneur. He put together Uri xpo, left XPO and began qxo. QXO is a building products company. He started it probably about a year and a half ago, bought Beacon Roofing, and he's basically going to consolidate the industry. What's really exciting about this is that a. It's Brad Jacobs we really like. You talked about the management team. We know what he is.

[Michael Batnick]

That guy's amazing.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

He is. Brad Jacobs might be one of the most impressive people.

[Josh Brown]

Why is he in roofing right now?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Because he's consolidating the home, the building products market, because it's incredibly fragmented. So what he's seeing is that, well, there's all these mom and pops that are in building products, selling tile and,

[Josh Brown]

like, all kinds of materials.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

He will. He just bought Kodiak and he's starting to get into the rest of it. So he started with roofing, then he's gonna get into everything else. He's gonna take pricing, add efficiency, add technology.

[Josh Brown]

So you're a growth investor. Like, how much potential do you need there to be in a story like this to include in your portfolio? Do you think this is, like, if at all. I know we don't know that what's gonna work, but if it really works, you're not looking for like a 20% return. That's not how you invest.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No. Okay, so let me give you just like, the framework for how he thinks. Beacon is about a billion dollars in ebitda. He thinks that he's going to increase the EBITDA of his company to 5 billion in 29 to 30.

[Josh Brown]

That's a big deal. That's a big deal in a quiet, sleepy industry.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right.

[Michael Batnick]

And he's done this over and over, this guy.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

He's done it over and over again.

[Michael Batnick]

I never heard of this guy. I think maybe four years ago he was on Patrick o' Shaughness podcast. He's been on, I think, again, what an incredible story.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

You know what? He's also an incredible human being. If you see how he takes care of the people that work for him. A, he's a workaholic. B, he truly takes care of them. Like, he is like a good boss, people. He's a great leader. So he has all the everything you want to see in a fantastic CEO.

[Michael Batnick]

I just listened to his book. I think it was called how to Make a Billion Dollars.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah. The first one or the second one? There's two of them. How to Make a Billion.

[Michael Batnick]

How to Make a Few Billion Dollars.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. What's the investment case for Applovin? In a world where we think the apps are gonna Right. Themselves. Tell us about that. You own that in your ECF and some of your funds.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah. So Applovin is. It's not really an app creating tool, it's an advertising tool.

[Michael Batnick]

It's the lovin.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It's the lovin.

[Josh Brown]

It's the lovin part that matters.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And what's exciting about Applovin, you see,

[Josh Brown]

but this stock did get caught up in the software.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It did in part because it's part of the IGV and this is part. And we have to talk about software at some point.

[Josh Brown]

But we'll go have dinner.

[Michael Batnick]

We're just getting started.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I know. I need another hour with you guys.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So with Applovin, they're basically an advertising company. And what they realized is that they have a lot of data. They have probably 50% share of served ads in mobile games. And what they realized is, you know what, we're pretty good at this. We're using an AI engine to serve up these ads and we're improving kind of the return for our clients. Why don't we start putting in lipstick or you know, actual goods and monetize our ads differently.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so that whole story of we're not only going to show you games to be downloaded inside of games.

[Josh Brown]

So you're. So you're playing Candy Crush and an ad pops up for Scrabble, like digital, like that. Okay. So they got very good at that. If people play this game, they'll probably play that game. Okay, fine. They know how to price it. The game app wants, wants more exposure. Great business. You're saying they're now taking this business in another direction.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. So all of a sudden they're entering the e commerce market to sell, to sell goods and it helps them monetize their inventory significantly.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so really interesting. I mean, Adam, another look. One of the keys for us is the management team. Adam is a founder, CEO hungry. He's very involved with who gets hired, how they get hired, the headcount. He's keeping his head count flat regardless of the top line growth. So it's just a cash generation.

[Josh Brown]

You seem to be on a first name basis with a lot of the founders of the businesses that we're talking about. How important is access to management for you as a portfolio manager? If there's a company like a nebius that says we're not going to talk to you, I don't care if you come to Davos, we don't do like. Or does that cool you off in terms of wanting to be an Investor, or is it not that important?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No, it's important because they end up being the stewards of your capital, of our clients capital. Right. We're betting. I mean, it is an important leg of any story is like, who is leading a company.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

You know, what is their integrity? You know, it's really important to know. To know the management teams, obviously, like,

[Josh Brown]

can you get too close to them, though, where you like them personally and they. They screw over shareholders or they're more inept than you thought? Like, is that the downside to that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Well, it's not like I'm friends with them per se.

[Josh Brown]

You just need to be able to ask them questions.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And I need to. I need to understand, like, are they. Are they good? Are they. Are they good stewards of capital? I mean, it's important to me, for me to understand that Brad is a great leader.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

But that is really, like, he has incredible humility. That is important for me to understand.

[Josh Brown]

I have two more things we have to get to or the audience will kill me. One of them is software. But before we go there, I said two days ago, I think intel is like the stock of the year so far.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

The comeback in intel is extraordinary for a lot of reasons. Number one, it's not every day that a former Dow component fallen angel, formerly one of the biggest market caps in the country, drops almost to single digits. Has a new CEO come in after multiple failed new CEOs and actually strikes a chord with growth investors again and reinvents itself. So that thing that we talked about early in the show about that reinvention, this looks like that on steroids, but I don't know as much about semis as you do, obviously, so I'd love to get your take on. Like, is this a buy here or did we miss the whole thing? Or investors getting too excited?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I'll be honest, I don't know. What I do know is Lippboo is the new CEO. Yeah, Lipboo is the new CEO of Intel. He is, again, an incredible leader. He is a visionary. And I mean, his story with Cadence. Someone should do a deep dive on Cadence and see how he turned Cadence around. He took it from almost going bankrupt to the company that it is today.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And that was under lippboo's direction. So if there's anyone that could take this asset and turn it around, it's lippboo.

[Josh Brown]

The Foundry is now being seen as a strategically important asset, whereas they were being ridiculed as recently as three years Ago, these idiots thought they could build Taiwan Semi in the United States.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah. And what I would say, that's where I'm skeptical.

[Josh Brown]

So you don't believe necessarily that that's a great asset and Taiwan Semi is

[Michael Batnick]

doing it too, in Arizona, aren't they?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Taiwan Semi is building their fabs in Arizona.

[Josh Brown]

But if we're short compute and intel is a company that can help bring more compute to the market.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. But you have to. It's not easy. Right. So if you've been inside of a fab and built a chip. It's difficult to build a chip.

[Josh Brown]

I wouldn't.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Which is why, like you only have one. Right. You only have one foundry now you have tsm.

[Josh Brown]

So you're not convinced that this foundry is going to be as successful as the bulls?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I don't know. Right. Because it is a bet on the execution of the engineers inside the foundry. Lippboo is not an engineer, you know, so hopefully he will hire the right people to make this happen.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

But I don't know.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so you're not in the, you're not currently in Intel.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No.

[Josh Brown]

Have you looked at it recently?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

We have looked at it recently. I just. It's an existential question, like can you be a foundry or can you not be a foundry?

[Josh Brown]

Okay. SaaS Apocalypse Jensen has said the bears have this story completely wrong. Agents and agentic AI is actually going to utilize all of the these CRMs and corporate software to help people. They're not going to spin up their own versions. Therefore, these companies do still have moats and they are relevant for the age of agentic AI. How do you feel about that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I don't agree, respectfully.

[Josh Brown]

Do you think Jensen's being too nice?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I think Jensen can't really say what is happening because.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so that's what I think.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

And so why do you think that?

[Josh Brown]

I think what you think. Like, no way. Like there's no way all of these companies can remain relevant if anthropic is gonna continue to come on at the rate that it's been coming on. So that doesn't mean. I think they're all cells. But I, you know, I think it's really hard to know, obviously, but right now they're all being treated like cells.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, because the growth story Salesforce cannot do what they've been doing for the last 15 years where you re up and the contract goes up.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

And that's a huge part of the story.

[Josh Brown]

Raise prices every year and no one's going to push back. How could that be? Possible, but.

[Michael Batnick]

And of course we can't know. Is the market overdoing it?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Okay, so what's the selling? So if you look at. Let's take Salesforce, Salesforce as of yesterday was trading at 10 times EV to free cash flow. If you include stock based compensation. Right? Right. Oh, no, if you exclude stock based compensation, including stock based compensation, it's like 14 and a half.

[Michael Batnick]

That's not that compelling.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It's kind of trading like broken tech with a little option value. That said, I think there's other interesting things out there right now that I'm definitive will cross this chasm. So the issue for me on the entire software space is that we only use 15 to 20% of the software of any of these packaged software that we buy.

[Josh Brown]

They're selling it per head. And people might say, you know what, I'll pay you per user. I'm done with this game.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And so it's a more competitive market. Right. People can write their own software and maybe. And there are a lot of people that will have. Will say that's not right because you have the security issues.

[Josh Brown]

Valid.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. And it's valid. But again, why am I paying you more if I don't use the software?

[Josh Brown]

If one of my employees comes to me and says, I wrote this sick program. I run a wealth management firm, I'm not gonna be like, oh cool, plug that into our system, let's see what happens. I don't care how much money I'm saving, I will potentially destroy my business. So that's the vibe coding thing. But there's a middle ground where the IT department at a company can do it themselves. Makes a concerted effort to actually replicate something that they're paying a third party for. And they show it to the board of directors and they say, like, guys, we really can do this and we can save the company $80 million over the next five years. And the company says, all right, that's what we're gonna do. Like, that's the real threat.

[Michael Batnick]

Top line is coming down for these companies.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And so I think the best case scenario is they don't get uplift. As you were saying on that dbnr, right. Which or is basically the expansion. The expansion revenue. So they no longer can grow on a seat by seat basis how much they're selling.

[Michael Batnick]

And that's big part of the growth story. That's the net retention.

[Josh Brown]

We know that if we think AI and then seats, if we think that AI is threatening like employment in general, then higher Headcounts are going to be harder to come by, period. Even if you can get a company to sign another package, doesn't mean they're going to have the same amount of employees.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

That's right. And so that dream of that 40% operating margin, that was why these SaaS businesses traded at the multiple that they did. I think that's a different terminal value. I don't know if it's 30, I don't know if it's 20. My gut is that given the landscape, these should be 20% operating margin businesses.

[Josh Brown]

Is cybersecurity immune or not immune?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I think parts of cyber will be immune, parts of it will not be. So Apollo Alto or a crowdstrike more likely to be immune because they're platforms and they can build on that platform just like Microsoft. But point solutions across, like Identity or. Okay, point solutions across all of software are going to be at risk because they'll just be usurped by either, you know, new players or people who will, like you said, write code inside of the company and. Or by bigger players that basically just add that on.

[Josh Brown]

I think the market has this right when I look at Constellation. So Constellation is like a collection of a thousand tiny niche software businesses where it's like this is dry cleaning software. So I don't know, 20,000 dry cleaners in America and they all standardize on this one tiny piece of software that seems super susceptible in a way that CrowdStrike's Falcon platform is not susceptible. And if you look at the dispersion even within software, let's say they're all down. The ones that are, the ones that seem more replaceable, those are down more. It doesn't look like just a wholesale panic. It looks fairly reasoned.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, I mean like Cadence isn't down as much as team Atlassian. Right. Atlassian has zero moat and that's why it's trading down to. I don't know where it is anymore, but bad.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. Are there any software stocks that you think it's already overdone and the market really has it wrong and are buys.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

You know, I do think Applovin was put into that bucket.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. And just cause it's in the index

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

and they trade it just because it's in the index and there were some short reports on it and you know, people are worried about advertising and agentic advertising and how does, how does Applovin get involved with that? You know, I think companies like Palantir, they're like the shepherd that is basically having everyone cross the chasm with Them.

[Michael Batnick]

Do you own Palantir?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

We do own Palantir. Not in the etf, but across the other side.

[Josh Brown]

That one didn't come down until the end.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

Like, that one held up better than the rest of SaaS.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Well, it's kind of sold it, actually. I don't know, it went from 210 to 160 before, like, the Sasspocalypse, and then it went, you know, later.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

But so it has pulled in quite a bit.

[Josh Brown]

Is Adobe dead? They're acting like there's nothing special about Adobe. And Meanwhile, I see OpenAI shut down Sora, and I don't know who's using all these other tools, but is anyone paying for anything? I don't know because they are paying for Adobe.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I just started to use Hicksfield. Hicksfield AI, which is basically a video generator. It's pretty amazing.

[Michael Batnick]

What are you using it for? What sort of videos do you generate?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Honestly, I just play with all these tools to figure out what they can do. And with Hicksfield, I was trying to figure out if I can make an advertisement for my app. Right. And to see if, like, if I wanted to have a TikTok video, how might I make it. Right. And it was pretty good. I mean, it wasn't great, but it was pretty good.

[Josh Brown]

I don't know if anybody told you this, but I am the creator of something called Halo. Have you heard this term?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I was told you were.

[Josh Brown]

On a scale of 1 to 10.

[Michael Batnick]

Did he tell you?

[Josh Brown]

How clever is that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Would you say it's clever? I would say I.

[Josh Brown]

No, that's good right there.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No, no, no, wait, wait. When we first thought about this, like, AI and the declining cost to create, the corollary to this was not. I mean, Halo is like a really awesome way.

[Josh Brown]

She's trying to say she came up with Halo. Listen to this.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No, I didn't. But was that any tangible asset would get multiple expansion.

[Josh Brown]

And here we have it. I mean, basically.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

So your packaging is beautiful.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, gorgeous. Well, all right. So the reason I'm asking you this question, though, could we overdo it?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Could we overdo which part?

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of hearing about it.

[Josh Brown]

Michael's gonna throw himself out the window for you guys again. All right? Looking at the Mag 7, if you had to rank all of them from most Halo to least Halo, and I said, I think so. My first opinion, Apple and Amazon are the two most Halo stocks in the Mag 7, meaning the physicality.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yes.

[Josh Brown]

The network and do. Okay. They don't Own data centers. Apple. But like my rectangle is my rectangle.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

And it's not going anywhere. And it's central to how the user is interacting with all of this AI. I think it's very Halo. What do you think about that?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Okay. If Apple doesn't act soon, that impact, that Halo designation is going away. Because over time, I do believe that AI will allow us to extract ourselves from our screens.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, into what, though? Glasses?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It could be glasses. It could be. I mean, you've seen the open AI, you've seen the button. It doesn't matter. It does. Maybe not that contact lens, but some form.

[Josh Brown]

Something will come along. It could be a bracelet, it could be spectacles. It could be something.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. It could be something that hangs with you. What Apple should be doing is becoming that personal agent.

[Josh Brown]

I can't believe they're not doing it already.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I don't know. I don't understand why they're.

[Josh Brown]

Where is a gentic Siri?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I don't know.

[Josh Brown]

Why does it. Why does Siri book my plane tickets?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I don't know.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, I agree with you, but they

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

are not doing it.

[Josh Brown]

And maybe. Why? I think they can't do it.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Well, I think they can do it, but they are.

[Josh Brown]

So they fired the AI guy recently. I think they don't have the horses.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

They didn't. I don't. I don't know if they fired him or if he left.

[Josh Brown]

Sure.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

But I think the issue is that they're so concerned with security as their whole being has been. We are going to use your data. We're the safe tech. And so how do you do this and still maintain the story that you're basically the safest tech? So, you know, I think there's a. There's probably a bit of a.

[Josh Brown]

You think that's conundrum. You think that's why they announced. They announced new and improved Siri and AI capabilities two full years ago have not delivered multiple iPhone models have come and gone and they don't have it. It's crazy. I've never seen anything like it.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I'll tell you, it's incredibly frustrating.

[Josh Brown]

Are the alarm bells going off there? Are they nervous?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I certainly hope so. I certainly hope so because I don't know if they're nervous. I think that to some extent they've milked this device enough. I personally hate carrying around an iPhone. I wish I didn't have to.

[Josh Brown]

I love it. I take it in the shower now. If there were a new form factor that everyone was doing, I would. If it's an amulet that you wear around your neck and you talk into it and people just got used to that. I would roll with it, but there just isn't.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

But there will be. So our job is to figure out what the possibilities are in three years.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. Is it possible for there to be a different device that is screenless? Is it possible for there to be a different device that you interact with differently so you're not opening this 150 times a day?

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Right. And I think there is.

[Michael Batnick]

But if that goes away, what happens to meta?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah. So this is a discussion that we've had internally of as you go to a more screenless world, what happens to other business models?

[Josh Brown]

What happens to Instagram? If I don't have my rectangle and I'm not doing this, then where does TikTok and Instagram get revenue from?

[Michael Batnick]

Zero.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Wouldn't it be wonderful to not have TikTok and Instagram? You know how bad it is for our brains.

[Josh Brown]

It's like really good for my ego though. At least Instagram. All right, I get it. I mean, but they said, listen, I remember Google, Google Glass was already like 12 years ago. It was a bust. The Snapchat spectacles didn't go anywhere. Apple's own stupid helmet that only Michael bought. No one else on earth. They sold one. He returned it to his credit. Like, I'm waiting, but until I think the rectangle is the rectangle and I don't think that anything can get in between us and our rectangles.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah, I think for now you're right.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

But the longer they don't have a solution, the more at risk their model becomes.

[Josh Brown]

Their capex went down year over year. They seem super comfortable resting on their laurels.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Well, I don't know if it's rest. I actually think this part is brilliant. They're like, you guys spend the capex. We're just going to be the layer on the.

[Josh Brown]

Just take the 30% in the app store.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

We're just going to sit on top and use your compute like you guys go spend all the capex.

[Josh Brown]

I think it's either Apple or Amazon or the best of the Mag 7 year to date for different reasons.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, is Apple still the best business in the world?

[Josh Brown]

I think the biggest size and the highest gross margins, probably.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No, Apple's gross margins are not the highest gross margins. Nvidia's gross margins are higher.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, Nvidia. Yeah. Nvidia would be the best.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Even Google. Google's gross margins are higher.

[Josh Brown]

Is that right? Okay.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah. Apple's 40%. 38. 40% is Apple's.

[Josh Brown]

That's it?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

What a piece of shit. Ankur, did you have fun on the show today?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

It was great.

[Josh Brown]

All right, so we're gonna take a brief intermission. No, I'm kidding. I have to say, this has been so illuminating for me. I've learned so much just talking to you today, and I think you are amazing on the show. And thank you so much for doing this.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Thanks for having me. You guys are fun.

[Michael Batnick]

Would you come back?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Oh, I would love to.

[Josh Brown]

What are you doing next week?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Not next week.

[Josh Brown]

This guy just already shaking his head now. All right, I want to tell people how they can learn more about Alger and your funds. So is it Alger.com, is it that simple?

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. And do you do. You're not doing social media really, are you? A little bit.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

No.

[Josh Brown]

No. Good for you. So I respect that the most.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

I think maybe I'll have. Maybe I'll write a bot to do it for me.

[Josh Brown]

We want to have you back to talk about robotics and also. I know. Look at your face. Look how excited you are. All right, well, so we're going to.

[Dr. Ankur Crawford]

We have a lot to talk about.

[Josh Brown]

All right, so we'll do. Maybe we'll do that later this year. I just want to say thank you so much for joining us. And, guys, thank you for listening. Compound appreciates you. If you have not yet hit the like button on this episode, on whatever platform you are watching or listening to us, now would be a pretty good time to do that. What do you think, Jon? Right now? 100%. 100%, he says. All right, guys, thanks again. We'll see you soon. You like how that came out? Yeah. Sa.